It’s cold! There will be six more weeks of winter! And of course, ironically, Groundhog Day is marked by a snow day, because there’s a blizzard. Hardly any snow in January, and then things go absolutely crazy, weather-wise. Still, there are poems. And we read them!

So that’s February done. This year, despite its being the shortest month and having winter break in it to boot, February felt like the longest, because of the snow and bitter cold. Even today it’s not letting go without a snarl, treating us to sub-zero temperatures. Perhaps that’s why there are so many good poems about February: so we’ll have the words to keep us warm on the dark days. Still, March is coming, and with it, spring. There is hope.

Last night it snowed again. When I looked out the window at my yard, buried–in places under six feet of snow–is it any wonder I wanted to be somewhere else? And we all know where my heart goes.

That made me think of another window in particular: the big window of the bedroom I stayed in a couple of years ago, at the B & B on Grange Close in Goring-on-Thames. The view through that window stayed with me, because when I looked out on an incredibly rainy morning, there were three kids walking in the street below. Two girls and a boy, they were wearing school uniforms, laughing as they took turns leaning into a match in cupped hands, lighting their illicit smokes and blowing clouds into the miserable air. The sound of their laughter, overlaid on the hush of the steady rain, was what hung with me, long after they’d rounded the corner and were gone from sight.

I am an easily-frightened person. That morning, I had planned to do something really frightening: I was going into Goring proper, over the railway bridge and to a cafe on the banks of the river, to meet a group of seasoned walkers for a trek to Nettlebed. I knew none of them. I had seen their leader, John Jones, onstage with Oysterband, but that was as close as I had come. They had all walked with him before. I was a stranger in a strange town–hell, in a strange country–planning to go wandering across Oxfordshire with people I didn’t know. In the rain. Standing there in the B & B window, clutching the draperies in my sweaty palms, I was terrified.

I gave myself the coward’s way out. You don’t have to do this. After all, no one knew me, no one knew I was coming…so if I just didn’t, no one would be the wiser. Right? Right? So I stood there, listening to the pouring rain, watching the water run along the road where only the phantoms of the laughing kids remained. Because I didn’t dare. Because I was easily frightened.

Then I thought through all the plans I’d made for this particular England adventure. I’d been in London with friends. I’d been in Bromyard with friends. Then I’d made two nights’ reservation here in Goring, so I could do one day of this week-long walk with the Reluctant Ramblers before flying home. I could have backed out easily at this point, but how stupid would that have been?

So I left the window, and sat on the bed to tie up my walking shoes–new that summer, broken in for just this adventure. I threw on my rain jacket–my hat was missing–grabbed up my pack, and went out into the rain. Still frightened, but still going.

I was already soaked by the time I got to the meet-up point. So was everyone else, from their walk from the train station. They were cheery and especially welcoming: Steve and Lesley, Anne and Paul, the other Lesley, Tom, Colin, Lauren, Tim, Al, Stephen and Trish, Else, Kay, Jane, Helen, John–the lot of them. We turned left and headed up toward the Thames Path, and I had succeeded before the first muddy mile had been walked. I was there, and I was going. And it was good.

Postscript:

I’ve since walked with them again, last summer. I will join the Ramblers at every available opportunity from now on, because my heart follows them.

Postscript 2:

Even getting lost with these people was fun. At one point, we came out on a road, and the map indicated that the path ran through a briar patch. Anyone bring a machete? Paul asked. I told him the TSA wouldn’t allow me to bring mine on the plane. Then we thrashed straight through.

Back to school after the Christmas break, and the world is frozen and lonely and still. Spring is still a long way away, and somehow, we have to muddle through snow and sub-zero temperatures, through frozen pipes, through all the hard work required to keep the fires burning in the wood stoves.

Fortunately, at school, we don’t rely on wood fires. Still, the building is drafty, and not all the heat is distributed evenly throughout the different wings. I wear my mittens in class sometimes, and do not object if students wear coats and bring cups of hot chocolate. January is a long month, and just trying to stay warm enough is an adventure: trying to stay cheerful is sometimes an impossibility. Still, people write poems about January, about winter, about ice and snow, and we’ll read them when we find them. Here are some we’ve found:

And so January comes to a close, slowly but surely, in the midst of raging snow: Three snowstorms in the last week, but who’s counting? Have I ever mentioned how I hate winter? I hate it because it’s cold and hard and expensive, though occasionally starkly beautiful. Fortunately, there are multitudinous poems to get us through…and there are now only six more weeks until spring. We can make it.

P. S. As always, I’d be grateful for your suggestions for poems to get us through. Spring is coming! Keep the fire alive–and thanks!

My friend Lesley is a fan of Merry Hell, a British band which claims it plays “folk rock with a punk attitude, indie ethos and Latino feel, plus [we’ve got] soul!” That’s just about everything covered, I think. However, Lesley first made me aware of them with the video for “The Ghost in our House,” which is decidedly weird. That’s what attracted me.

Then came Christmas, and a fantastic present winged its way from Lesley in the UK to me: the first two Merry Hell CDs. Blink…and You Miss It was released in 2011, followed by Head Full of Magic, Shoes Full of Rain a year and a half later. I started with Blink… just to be chronological, and the Kettles and company had me from the get-go. The first cut, “Drunken Serenade,” which was originally from the Tansads‘ final album (that 90’s band featured several current Merry Hell personnel), rocks out from the opening manic mandolin, through pounding drums and bass beneath the raspy and true vocals of Andrew Kettle. Nothing decidedly weird there, just hard-driving music.

There are so many other great tracks on the disc that it’s difficult to single out any for particular attention. “The Crooked Man,” a Virgina Kettle composition, is one extremely angry political song, with the white-collared criminal graphically “picking the flesh from our backbone.” “One More Day” by contrast is a delightful bit, with a catchy refrain beautifully harmonized by Virginia and Andrew Kettle (brother- and sister-in-law, FYI), about missing someone–poignant and yet fun. By far the most lovely song I’ve heard in quite some time–one that I’d die to have someone sing to me personally–is “Rosanna’s Song”:

The light that shines around you is like no other

Winter fire of January gold against the pale

And I’ve had the pleasure to go walking in your company

All along the hills of isle and dale

It’s a beautiful love song, and the first few times I played it I thought I’d cry.

On Head Full of Magic, Shoes Full of Rain, I found a number of musical winners as well–the kinds of songs that cement a band in place with a second CD. “Rosanna, Let Me In” is a remarkable song, though its intent is obviously not to be as heart-breakingly beautiful as the eponymous Rosanna’s other gift. “My Finest Hour” is a rousing complaint about the frustration of the speaker at being thwarted in his efforts to be alone with his girlfriend. Then there’s the incredibly danceable “Iron Man,” again with the amazing driving voice of Andrew Kettle (and again, a Tansads favorite). There are quieter moments on this CD as well: Virginia and Andrew Kettle duet in “Emerald Green,” taking alternate verses, then coming together in harmony, for a waltz about a couple separated by war.

I have the CDs in my car. Since I originally played them on the computer, the songs are there as well. I have not been anywhere since before Christmas without the accompaniment of Merry Hell. They have taken up residence in my head–the vocal lines, for the most part, both male and female, melody and harmony. It’s been a while since I’ve been so completely taken over by a band, and it’s both amazing and slightly uncomfortable (you try teaching Hamlet with “Drunken Serenade” as an internal soundtrack!). I’m saving my pin money, because the next time I’m in the UK, I’m forcing Lesley to take me to a Merry Hell gig, as this is all her fault.

Postscript: Some of the more rocking tunes are going to be great to have playing on my mental soundtrack come good weather, when I can get back out on that bike. Songs to Bike to 101!

There are so many poems about cold and snow and ice. Perhaps it’s simply the hunkering down we have to do in the storm that makes poets write that storm down. Imagine them, if you will, huddled next to the wood fire, blowing on cold hands before lifting the pen to make that first bold stroke on the blank page. Imagine them recreating the stark beauty. Imagine them. Because they are imagining you.

It’s been a long month. But a good one. Because there are poems. When you wake up in the dark early morning and think I don’t know if I can do this for another day–the poems keep you company. You crawl out from under the covers into the crystalline air and start looking for the beauty. Then you find it. And everything is okay. At least, that’s what I keep telling these kids. I hope they believe me.

November: one of my favorite months. It just seems a release after all the colorful expectations of October. Time to settle down, get the wood in, freeze all the food to last through the winter. The leaves are gone. The birds are gone. The light, once Daylight Savings Time is over, is gone. Hibernation is the story here. Hunkering down next to the woodstove with a blanket and a book and a cup of tea. Waiting for winter, and for winter to be done.

Here are some poems.

November 3, Monday: Snow day–no school

Jack Ridl

November 4, Tuesday: Snow day–no school

November 5, Wednesday: “Snow Day” by Billy Collins (because I always read this one for the first snow day of the year; this is the earliest snow day I can remember.)

I was late, exhausted, and my feet hurt, but John Jones bid me welcome when I found the private bar at the Lysses, filled with other ramblers. I folded myself up on the floor against the back wall, exchanged smiles with some of the others. We’d put in 17 miles that day, starting at The Shoe Pub in Exton, circling up onto Old Winchester Hill, down to The Izaak Walton Pub in East Meon, around and up to Beacon Hill before dropping back down for a pint at The Shoe. We’ll have a bit of a session-rehearsal tonight at the hotel, John told us. I didn’t think I could make it, but I sure as hell didn’t think I could miss it.

I have John’s solo CD, Rising Road. I had been on one day of the White Horses Walk two summers previously. I had seen the Reluctant Ramblers do a show at the Nettlebed Folk Club. Yet somehow, I had never really thought about how those songs and that show came together–a really strange observation from a person who has played in bands and performed in plays off and on for years. Of course I know about rehearsals. But on that Wednesday night in the private bar in the Lysses Hotel, I sat in on the one for the Ramblers’ opening show at the Wickham Festival the next day. John, Rowan Godel, Boff Whalley, Al Scott, Lindsey Oliver, Tim Cotterell: they sat on couches, perched on stools or comfy chairs before the fireplace; the rest of us jammed into the small room as best we could while they constructed–and deconstructed–their performance for the next day.

Rowan, but not at the Lysses.

It was brilliant. A snatch of song, then discussion. Should Al play guitar, or Boff? Lindsey: bowing, or plucking? A run-through of a single line, harmonized by John and Rowan: should she let her voice fall sharply on the final word of the phrasing? In that instance, they tried it both ways without coming to a complete decision, before John turned to long-time producer Al and asked what do you think? No, Al said. And there was no falling from that note. It was interesting that Al did not explain, nor did they ask him to; his judgment was enough.

Some songs they sang in full, including the beautiful “Black and White Bird,” a song John claimed was inspired by a woman of his acquaintance finding a bird in a burlap sack in the stables where her horse was kept–because this is Wales, and that’s what they do. Rowan’s solo contribution to the show

Lindsey Oliver, from her website. (I wish she had a picture of her playing in bare feet.)

was to be “Raggle-Taggle Gypsy;” she sang it all the way through, curled up in a chair in the corner; John suggested punching up a line in the penultimate verse, where the lady spurns her ‘new-wedded lord’ and his riches for the love of her gypsy, since that was the climax of the song. Boff’s song was to be “Everyone Sang,” but we weren’t to hear it until the show.

I don’t know how late it was when I left, to make the walk back through darkened Fareham to my Roundabout Hotel home. I left the group still singing, still sharing pints. Their voices, their instruments followed me down to East Street, past the bakery, the orthodontist, the school. The music was still in my spinning head when I lay down in my room on the top floor.

Postscript: The next afternoon, after lunch and a pint in the ironically named village of Soberton, we walked into the Wickham Festival. First into the tent, we walkers crowded the rail before the stage to watch and listen to the result of the work of the previous night. Including Mr. Boff’s “Everyone Sang”–and everyone did. Magic.

“In an interview with French paper La Croix, [Nobel judge Horace] Engdahl said that the ‘professionalization’ of the job of the writer, via grants and financial support, was having a negative effect of literature. ‘Even though I

The Judge

understand the temptation, I think it cuts writers off from society, and creates and unhealthy link with institutions,’ he told La Croix. ‘Previously, writers would work as taxi drivers, clerks, secretaries and waiters to make a living. Samuel Beckett and many others lived like this. It was hard–but they fed themselves, from a literary perspective.”’

I have never been a taxi driver. Perhaps that’s my problem. Then again, I have never had a grant or other financial support for my writing, either. Does this mean I’ll never be a Nobel Prize winner? Or that I will? I’m so confused.

Perhaps, though, it should count in my favor that I have had two taxi drivers who have become enormous parts of my backstory: my life, in the parts that matter. One I met when I was a teenager in an ill-fated chambermaid job at the Eastland Motor Hotel in Portland; I knew Livingston for a grand total of three days. The other, Frank Ireland, I knew for even less time: a couple of hours he spent driving me on the scenic route between Wadebridge and Tintagel in North Cornwall, the first time I went to England on my own. But those two taxi drivers gave me stories, and since I live my life in stories, time is immaterial.

I was 15 when I met Livingston. I never knew his last name. He was from Jamaica, an immigrant who worked days as an electrician at the Eastland, and nights as a taxi driver, saving his money and sending it to his mother back home. He might have been in his early twenties. But in my white-bread world, he was foreign and exciting and interesting. He and I worked on the same floors at the Eastland in the short time before I lost my job (I had to be 16, it turned out, to work in a hotel, even as a chambermaid). I made beds and vacuumed and cleaned out ashtrays and emptied trash. He did whatever the electricians did; but he also wired his boombox into the wall panels when he worked, and used the 16-story building as his personal antenna in order that he might listen to reggae stations broadcasting from New York. I don’t know how he did it. He tried to explain to me, but gave up after a while, because it was obvious I didn’t get it. Never mind,let’s just dance. And we did, in the hallway when I’d done one room and was moving on to the next in the 16 each maid had to tend to each day. He explained to me how he drove his cab at night, up and down between Commercial Street by the harbor and Back Bay on the other side of the city, listening to his reggae, leaning against the door, his long right leg stretched out on the seat beside him, his left foot on the pedals. When did he sleep? Who knew? I just knew when he danced. Terrible dancer, you. He would shake his head, grasp my wrist. Like this. This. I was a grave disappointment to him. I take you to Kingston. We teach you there. But instead, I got my walking papers, and I never saw him again.

Frank, on the other hand, was a lifesaver. I had

Not this one. The one to the left.

come into the station at Bodmin Parkway to find that, Sunday, no buses were running. With another couple, I hitched a ride into Wadebridge. There, desperate to find a ride to Tintagel, I finally got hold of Frank at ADA Cabs from a public call box on The Platt. He said he wasn’t planning to work that day, but he’d come for me at 4. In the meantime, did I see that pub across the way? Don’t go to that one. Go to the one beside it. It’s better. I had my first pint of Cornish Cream at the next pub over, sitting at a picnic table in the side garden, reading a book, until 4. When Frank finally came, in his black and white cab, he asked if I wanted to sit in front or back (I chose front); then he asked if I needed to get to Tintagel immediately, or if I wanted to take the scenic route–Same price!–and you know what I chose. We spent hours driving

The scenic route!

about the North Cornwall countryside, and I got lessons about Delabole slate; about tin mining; about how once there have been pigs, there’ll be nettles, and there’s nothing you can do to get rid of them. He showed me the beach I’d want to go to. He told me which pubs in which villages were the good ones. He was appalled that, where I live, there’s no place social like the pubs: what do you do of an evening when you just want to walk out for a pint? He called me “love,” which is apparently a very common and colloquial endearment west of Taunton. He told me next time I came, I needed to rent a car on my own, because there was so much to do, so much to look at, so much to find out. It was a great sadness to finally reach the Bosayne Guest House on Atlantic Street in Tintagel, to have to get out of the cab. I have not seen Frank since, though I did, the following winter, send him four pounds sterling in a Christmas card, so he could walk out for a pint on me. I still have the card he sent in return.

No, Mr. Engdahl, I’ve never been a taxi driver. But I’ve been mildly in love with a pair of them for years. And they’ve both fed me, in a literary sense.

I’ve been seeing Facebook memes about how October is so many people’s “favorite color.” It seems to have taken the fancy of any number of poets, writing about the month, about the season, about things which are part of both. Exploring the poems of October has been quite an interesting adventure. One person in my third period class did pick up on the fact that so many poets named their pieces “Autumn” or “October;” didn’t we just read that one? was the question I heard. Surprise! No, no, we didn’t. We read another one with that title by a different author. Isn’t it cool to see the different takes by the different writers?

I realized, though, that I always introduce the class by saying the same thing: Today I have a poem for you. It was brought home to me when a young person shot back, Don’t you always? And–for four years and two months now–I always have!

October 2, Thursday: “October” by Patrick Kavanagh (both Patrick Kavanagh in general, and tomorrow’s Hughes poem in particular have been suggested in the past by the poet Jenny Doughty: she understands my taste, I think.)

October 17, Friday: “Octobers” by Loren Graham (because of an ad that came in my mail this week: How come we don’t get poetry ads in the mail? one young person asked. Hallelujah for targeted advertising!)

Two years ago, Julia got me hooked on the novels of Phil Rickman, a writer from the Border Country. His books are…weird. Often unnerving. Extremely intelligent. Layered. Containing multiple narratives. Spooky? Characters are spiritual, sometimes within the framework of established religion, sometimes not. There are hauntings, some of them psychological, some of them inexplicable. The books are musical, with bands and solo artists and sometimes Edward Elgar. The books are full of poetry, and history, and archaeology, and folklore. There are characters who flit between books, sometimes in major and sometimes in minor roles. There are stand-alones; there are books that might be pairs; there is a series. Thanks to Julia, I have been devouring them as quickly as I can lay my hands on them.

Just read it.

In December, which is perhaps one of the most unnerving of all Rickman’s novels, a group of musicians, who had worked together 14 years previously with disastrous results, reluctantly reunite to record again. The music label which coerces them into this uncomfortable situation arranges the recording to be done in a studio in the tower of a ruinous abbey in Wales, the place where everything went to hell for the members on the night of December 8, 1980. Just to see what would happen. Well, things do happen, and of course, in Rickman form, they happen cataclysmically.

Fast-forward to me. And Julia and Roger, in August, when I visited. I thought we could go to Llanthony Priory, Julia suggested casually. She knows how much I love ruinous things. Then she told me the tower formerly housed a recording studio. Oh. I got it. Of course, we had to make a drinks stop at the Skirrid Inn–the characters did in December, too, for sustenance before facing their ordeal. The oldest pub in Wales, first listed in chronicles in 1100, the inn is dark, low-ceilinged, heavy-beamed, and sports a noose hanging in the stairwell: hundreds of people

At the Skirrid: Julia and Roger don’t look unhappy at all.

were tried and hanged there over the years of its existence, Julia told me. A dreadfully unhappy place. From the table on the cobbles out front we could see the mountain after which the inn is named, a high double peak which legend says split at the moment of the crucifixion of Jesus. Seriously atmospheric.

On to the priory. The roads were twisty and narrow–lanes, really, between high hedges. Yes, I could feel the possibility of the a car crash in the dark on the road into the ruins, just as happens in December. Even though the sun was out, the clouds were ominous, casting shadows over the high fields where sheep dotted the grass. The massive stonework rose up before us, and it was beautiful against the sky and the Brecons, and sad, and even haunted. We wandered through the chapter house, Julia identifying rooms now open to the air. Roger and I read about the history, the establishment, the de Lacys, the destruction, the abandonment. I wondered about the square tower, still intact; next to it, a much later building houses a restaurant, a bar, and rooms to let. Strangely, though: the Abbey of the novel seemed gloomier, more frightening than the actual Priory…but of course, it was August, not December. It was sunny, not snowing. And it was daytime, not after dark. I don’t know if I’d be more anxious if I’d taken a room overnight in midwinter; I’d probably be looking over my shoulder all the time for perverted ghostly monks.

Postscript: Julia, Roger and I did not have cake at the restaurant here. It was much too early.